6 Blue Balloons
by Akina Sachi
Summary: Meiko's parents are getting divorced, and a simple balloon is the last thing she gets from them together.  The balloon goes around the world, and Meiko learns something about change and that it might not always be as horrible as she thinks.  One-shot.


This is a story I wrote for this academic summer camp I went to. I originally had this idea and was going to write this for fanfiction, but I decided to use it for the assignment instead. So I sort of changed a lot of stuff so that I could make it a fanfiction. Don't be mean! :(

* * *

A little girl sat cross-legged on the flowered quilt in her room. She clutched onto her tie-dyed stuffed dog and looked around with her red eyes, then she brushed her hair out of her face. This was the last time this room was going to be her only room. She's going to have two rooms pretty soon, and nothing would be the same anymore. Her parents weren't going to be together, and she would have to move between the houses. The concept of someone's parents not together would be hard for anyone, much more for a five year old. Tears fell from her eyes onto her stuffed dog.

"Meiko?" Her mom came into the room, "Do you want to go to the beach?"

"Is Daddy going?" Meiko looked up at her mom.

"…Yes," Her mom said after some hesitation. Meiko's parents knew that the divorce was hard on her, so they decided to take her somewhere as a family one more time.

"Okay then," Meiko smiled. She slid off her bed, put her stuffed dog on her pillow, and went out the door with her mom.

At the beach, her parents bought Meiko a helium balloon. It wasn't anything special; just a normal blue balloon filled with helium so it would float. With a red marker, she wrote her name on the balloon. The red of the marker, combined with the blue of the balloon made a slightly purple color.

While Meiko was eating ice cream, she accidently let go of the balloon. She hurriedly tried to grab it, but nothing came into her hands except air. She watched it disappear behind clouds, then reappear again, only to go far out of her field of view.

"Bye bye, balloon," She whispered as she watched it fly higher and higher into the atmosphere. Tears came into her eyes again, crying because she lost the last thing her parents gave her together.

Then it was gone.

The balloon floated across the sky. It drifted in between clouds, only occasionally coming down low enough for people to gaze at it for a moment. Its blue almost blended into the sky on a sunny day. It went across the ocean, carried by the breeze.

It was getting lower in the air when it caught on a statue of a former queen in front of the palace.

As a visitor was walking out of the palace, he spotted the balloon in the queen's outstretched metal hand. He quickly called one of the guards to fetch it. When it was taken down, he took it home and studied the rubbery surface.

"What's that, Kaito?" His friend Gakupo asked.

"It's a balloon," Kaito smiled, "It was on the statue of the queen today."

"Oh," Gakupo studied the balloon, "What about this name? Meiko?"

"It must be good luck," Kaito replied. They sat down on the couch. Kaito let the helium take it up until it stopped at the white ceiling, then he put his head in his hands.

"Yes!" Kaito gasped, then grinned. He took out a red marker and drew a heart on the balloon. Then he opened the window, and let the balloon outside.

"Please let me be lucky in love," He rolled his eyes and laughed as he watched it float upwards. Gakupo raised his eyebrows at him before he chuckled and shook his head. But deep inside, Kaito was serious.

* * *

The balloon floated until it reached a big lake. A girl with white hair, despite her obvious youth, found it. She had just taken a break from swimming when she found the balloon. She brushed back her white bangs and took the balloon off the tree branch it was stuck on.

"Look what I found, Miku," The girl showed her friend the balloon.

"That's great, Haku," Miku said, "But I don't want to see it." Then she turned on her heels and walked out of the room, texting on her phone.

"Okay Miku," Haku said softly, weakly smiling, "I'll talk to you later."

Haku had always been close to the green-haired girl. She had taught Miku how to cook. In turn, Miku had been kind to her even when no one else was. But Miku was acting strangely lately. Ever since she started a new private school, she never wanted to talk to her. The white-haired girl noticed the red heart drawn on the balloon, then got a red marker from her bag. She drew a jagged line in the middle of the heart, breaking it in half.

"Please notice me again, Miku," Haku whispered, then she stepped out onto the front porch and released the balloon.

* * *

The balloon flew yet again into the air, occasionally disappearing behind clouds. It landed in a high apartment building in a bustling city. A girl named Luka found it and took it back to her empty apartment. Her parents were never home; they were always working. So she was always alone.

Luka sighed, and walked to her living room. She closed her eyes and imagined her grandmother. Her grandmother had died two years ago, but Luka still thought of her all the time. She liked to envision that her grandmother was still watching over her all the time. She smiled to herself, then opened her blue eyes.

She took out a red pen that she used for her homework. Then on the balloon, next to the heart, she drew a pair of eyes. Then she went out to the room they used to hang clothes up to dry. With some effort, she lifted the window open and took the screen out. Then she let the balloon go, like a message to her grandmother.

"Watch over me, grandma," Then after thinking about it, "Please?"

* * *

Next, the balloon flew to a medium-sized house. It got caught on a chimney, where a fourteen year old boy named Len found it while he was going up to the roof to look at the stars. It hit him in the head when the wind blew it, and he looked at it with surprise. He took it down, then climbed back into the house.

"Rin?" Len whispered into the bedroom he shared with his twin sister, "I found something for you."

"Really?" Rin smiled at him from her bed, then she coughed, "What is it?"

"It's a balloon," Len replied, handing it to her.

"Let's make a wish on it!" Rin's eyes sparkled. Len laughed gently.

"Okay," They closed their eyes.

"I wish you would feel better," Len said. Rin was always ill. She had asthma, so she was always coughing and she had to rest as much as she could. He took a red pen and drew a line in between the two pieces of the heart, and wished that his sister would hold together, just like this heart.

"I will be better," Rin said brightly, climbing out of her bed. Then they let the balloon out of the window together.

* * *

The blue balloon drifted over the ocean again, this time the Atlantic Ocean. It hit a window on the second floor of a house.

A fifteen year old girl heard the light tap of the balloon on her window and put her pencil down. She opened the window and took it inside. She turned it around and studied it with her red eyes. Then she gasped in surprise.

On the balloon was her name, printed in her own five year old scribbles. Meiko immediately remembered when her parents took her to the beach and bought her this balloon. She remembered the hot air, and the smell of hot dogs cooking on the boardwalk. She ran her hands through her short, brown hair and smiled. Then tears slid from her cheeks onto the rubbery material of the balloon.

She had written her name when she was so young. She was so scared about her the divorce of her parents, that she was upset over losing the balloon. Everything was alright now. Her parents had divorced ten years ago, and she had learned to move on. Like the heart that was drawn beside her name, _her_ heart had been in pieces, but she had held it together, like the thin line. The balloon had miraculously survived the ten years of floating, and Meiko planned to survive for much longer. The moving between the two houses had been strange and unnatural at first, but now it was routine. She now had two brothers and three sisters. Life was definitely different, but not horrible.

She smiled again and let the balloon float in her room. Everything was alright. Everything would be alright.


End file.
